Book review: High Performance MySQL

Kevin Day, October 1st, 2007

High Performance MySQL is a great book for programmers new to database administration who are using MySQL. It has tips on writing faster queries, tuning database parameters, and indexing tables properly. While I had previously stumbled around with EXPLAIN statements and tried to guess what was going on with slow queries, this book demystified how MySQL really works.

This book is most useful for programmers looking for help beyond the standard introductory PHP/MySQL books and tutorials. It assumes that you know how to create a database-driven website but don’t know how to make it faster or deal with high traffic. It also covers the basics of databases such as transactions and index types.

I would have preferred a more detailed description of database tuning because there are a lot of settings to tweak, and it’s not easy to predict how they will work together. The book does provide a decent starting point though, and I now feel comfortable fiddling around with MySQL’s settings until I find the ones that work.

Overall, it’s a good book that will help any programmer using MySQL.

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